I have a 3½ year old tomcat named Moses (he's shown in the picture below, which was taken a couple of years ago after he was caught red-handed shredding a cat food bag that he found in a trash can in the garage) who often sits around when I'm writing, sits around on me when I'm writing, all 14 or 15 pounds of him. At first, it was just sitting in my lap, but now it's often a matter of sitting in my lap with his front legs resting up on the desk, with his paws almost touching the keyboard (he sometimes takes a poke at the keyboard, producing a temporary gibberish 2 or 3 letters in whatever I'm writing) as he watches either my hands typing or whatever happens to be moving on the computer screen. He actually seems to "happy" when he's doing that (the look in his eyes when he turns around and looks up at me is almost child-like), just as he seems quite "unhappy" when I put him down after a while so that I can get things done. And why shouldn't he? Although God granted humans a little more intelligence and wisdom than (the rest of) the animals, that doesn't mean that they don't feel joy or sadness, pleasure or pain, just like humans - which makes any kind of senseless, needless cruelty to animals (such as a local news report that I saw here last week in which some young teenage boys were arrested for taking turns viciously beating an innocent, defenseless kitten with a shovel - the kitten was rescued by someone who was passing by and is now recovering in an animal hospital) a crime, not just in man's eyes, but God's.
They Aren't Just "Dumb Animals"
Righteous people are not cruel to animals:
"A righteous man cares for the needs of his animal, but the kindest acts of the wicked are cruel" (Proverbs 12:10 NIV)
Animals may not have the intelligence and wisdom of humans, but according to the Word of God, animals somehow know something that many humans don't know, or refuse to know - that humans didn't evolve from animals, but that God is the Creator of all:
"But ask the beasts, and they will teach you; the birds of the air, and they will tell you; or the plants of the earth, and they will teach you; and the fish of the sea will declare to you. Who among all these does not know that the hand of The Lord has done this? In His hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of all mankind." (Job 12:7-10 RSV)
Although their potential is infinitely (literally) different, humans and (other) animals were created together, and exactly alike:
"I said in my heart with regard to the sons of men that God is testing them to show them that they are but beasts. For the fate of the sons of men and the fate of beasts is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beasts; for all is vanity. All go to one place; all are from the dust, and all turn to dust again. Who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward and the spirit of the beast goes down to the earth?" (Ecclesiastes 3:18-21 RSV)
Fact Finder: Is even the nature of the wild animals going to change after The Return Of Jesus Christ? Isaiah 11:6-9 See also Scenes From The Millennium